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grok · 08-26-2020, 01:12 PM

The San Francisco Pride suffered a minor disaster during the first round of S55 playoffs. Head Office announced that San Francisco, who had just traded for Geezus Kryyst to shore up their tandem, forgot to play him for a single game. With six games of cap penalties, the San Francisco Pride are now staring down an unprecedented $12 million cap penalty in S55 with only seven players in their entire organization signed through S56 or beyond. In this deep dive, we’ll look at the unique cap hell of an already struggling team pegged with a 16% salary cap penalty.

Before we begin, we should discuss my methodology. It’s basically the same as my previous deep dive. We will assume that all players will re-sign for the same contract value. For rookies coming to the SHL, we will assume they sign for the same cap hit or the minimum for their band, whichever is higher. We will use each player’s TPE count on this day to determine if they increase in minimum contract. If a player is on a minimum or near minimum contract and they have enough TPE to advance to a higher TPE tier, we will increase their salary to the minimum for that salary band.

An important part of our methodology this time is that I will release inactives as needed, under one of two conditions. First, if a rookie must be called up, I will release the lowest TPE inactive available to call up the prospect. Second, if a rookie has similar TPE to an inactive on the current roster, I will release the inactive and replace them with the rookie. This is simply because San Francisco has six inactive players on the roster and nine rookie players over 340 TPE--they are in a unique situation to start replacing inactives on the main roster to save cash and get playing time.

We start with the forward group. There are three S53 players that will require waivers--Sven Svenson, Kriss Darzins, and Chris de Siren. de Siren is inactive, so we will assume he clears waivers. Darzins and Svenson, however, will come up to the main roster. We also get to call up S54 rookie Thorbjorn Gunnarson. Although I thought initially that the positions wouldn’t allow this, S48 forward Emeka Valentine-Okoli has retired and will be removed from the roster by season’s end.

Andrey Barbashev II and Ricky Spanish get released for Svenson and Darzins call ups. We then face re-signing. Forwards Gunnarson, Metcalf Jr., Moyer, Lekberg Osterman, Primeau, Svenson, and Darzins all require new contracts. The only major pay-raise is Lekberg Osterman promoting to the $5 million tier. If all three rookies take matching salaries from their last send-down seasons, together they increase SFP’s forward budget by $3 million dollars. This can be mostly mitigated if one or more of them take minimum deals.

On defense, the second pairing of Alex Petrenko and Prince Devitt are locked in. Unfortunately, the top pairing of Bork and Schieck get hit hard by rulebook changes. Due to changes to tiers and the HTD system, Charlie Schieck’s HTD would not adjust down when he regresses below 1300 TPE in the offseason. As HTDs only provide one tier of relief in the new rulebook, he will still cost the team $3m even after regression. Defenseman Ray Bork is also extremely unlikely to regress under 1300, and will cost the team an extra $1m next season.

I did make a minor methodology change here, signing inactive Kalevi Karhunen to a minimum contract rather than his $3.5 million deal. With Karhunen entering regression, it’s extremely unlikely that he will receive competitive bids in the offseason. This also gives defenseman Rikard Bjerg another season of growth before he calls up. Jack Tanner also gets an extension at the same cap hit, although it is extremely likely he could drop to the $2m tier.

In goaltending, SFP still has to pay Kryyst $5 million for the S55 season. Kavanagh gets a nice raise to $3 million as well, although it is entirely possible he gets over 1000 TPE and requires a $4 million contract in S55. Finally, in send-downs, the only piece of note is re-signing Chris de Siren to a $2.5 million deal as he is inactive. Everyone else gets contracts as expected.

In total, the breakdown for SFP in these circumstances is

Forwards - $37,000,000
Defense - $20,000,000
Goaltending - $8,000,000
Send Downs - $5,500,000

Cap - $75,000,000
Payroll + Send Downs - $70,500,000
Penalties - $12,000,000

Cap Space - (-$7,500,000)

This is, as one might imagine, Bad. However, SFP does have some options to clear a little cap.

If SFP can get Rikard Bjerg to agree to a $2 million or even $1 million contract, they can save space by calling him up and releasing Kalevi Karhunen. Moving HTDs onto players most likely to reach 1600 TPE could save cash long-term. This only represents $1 million in potential savings this season by HTDing a player like Henrik Lekberg Osterman, but when you’re $8 million in the hole you take it where you can. Dropping inactive send down Chris de Siren could save $500,000 and is low risk. Getting forwards Sven Svenson, Kriss Darzins, and Thorbjorn Gunnarson to agree to minimum deals saves a total of $3 million on the season.

This saves $5.5 million, if every single player agrees to the minimum contract available and to HTDs when necessary. This could be a reasonable option for SFP in isolation--take the $4 million cap penalty next season, give out a couple raises, and focus the rebuild. The only issue is that S56 is a reddit draft. SFP will want extra cap space to sign some of the premium recreates and first-gens available. For this, we need to take dramatic measures.

Geezus Kryyst hasn’t posted on the forums since July. While it would look terrible, SFP would save $1m or more by cutting Kryyst and replacing him with rookie goaltender Nicolae Antonescu. If Kryyst counts as a 50% cap penalty, replacing him with Antonescu saves $1m. If Kryyst can be cut for free, SFP could save a full $4.5m by replacing him with a league-minimum backup. SFP also has the option to expose quality players in the expansion draft. Exposing high-value players on big contracts that don’t fit their window like Ray Bork, Charlie Schieck, Steven Moyer, Jeff Brogen, Vince Reaper, or even Geezus Kryyst would save a ton of cash. Finally, SFP has the option to let some players go in free agency. With Bjerg, Stromberg, and de Siren available as plugs today, SFP could easily let Metcalf Jr., Tanner, Schieck, Bork, or Moyer walk in the offseason.

Ultimately, SFP is going to have to find a way to shave nearly $10 million dollars off their budget just to draft well in S56 due to the scope of a $12 million cap penalty. It won’t be fun for anyone, especially the players.

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Approved! +5 TPE @grok

SFresh3 · 08-26-2020, 01:29 PM

To simplify this nicely:
Yikes!

*roastpuff* · 08-26-2020, 01:33 PM

Jala · 08-26-2020, 04:05 PM

This is really indepth and well done, great job

Henrik · 08-26-2020, 04:41 PM

Really enjoyed reading this, well done!

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